


Eyes I Dare Not Meet In Dreams

by BelaBellissima



Series: The Hollow Men [1]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, M/M, Multi, Museum Heist - Freeform, Non-Linear Narrative, Past Character Death, Post Season 2, Rom Character(s), Vietnamese Character(s), Wally shows up in the future, a bunch of characters mentioned, dark!AU, evil!justice league, no profreading we die like mne, of a sort, the justice league is dead y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 11:38:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16809886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelaBellissima/pseuds/BelaBellissima
Summary: “Hey, Artemis,” he says next, pulling her hand up to press a kiss to the back of her knuckles. She smiles at him, the small one she reserved for when she was content and not worried about what life might throw at them. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it while she was undercover, and it does him good to see it again.“How long have I been out? What happened? Did we stop the MFD’s? I can remember… fading.”The sad looks come back.Or: Wally accidentally time travels six years into the future. It's worse than he could have ever imagined.





	Eyes I Dare Not Meet In Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MathIsMagic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathIsMagic/gifts).



> Mind the tags!!!! Please!!!!!! Dark AU here!!!!
> 
> Nothing is explicit, but there is a lot of talk of murder and justification of it, and a brief line that discusses dubious consent in the beginning.
> 
> let me know if you want something tagged that I've forgotten!!
> 
> Also this was inspired by the end notes on chapter 16 of MathIsMagic's fic Fixations, found [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/784543/chapters/1479369) I highly recomend this fic, I've read it multiple times and love it soooo so much.  
> (also @MathIsMagic I hope you don't mind Dick/Wally since your notes mentioned them just being friends....)
> 
> Title from "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot

Wally hates walking around D.C.

It’s not the stares of the people around him that make him uncomfortable. He’s used to people watching him all the time. He was a superhero growing up, and the clown among his friends. He thrived in the spotlight. It was different than Dick’s dependence on a crowd, because Dick grew up in it, but Wally? He _made_ it his place. So, no, it’s not the stares of the people that bother him.

It’s not the collar either. Not anymore, at least.

When Artemis first put it on him, only a few hours after he had woken up, he felt trapped. Half the time he would have said it was borderline claustrophobic, but he was always outside. He used to need to run with a physical ache. His body was sore constantly, his own speed energy building up inside him after his sudden coming to a standstill following six years of running.

Christ.

Six years.

It’s been six months since he woke up in the Watchtower, six months since he found out that his family was dead and his friends had become killers and that, oh, yeah, he’d accidentally run forward in time, and had absolutely no way to get back because of significant temporal events or the ripple effect or some other bullshit reason that Dick had explained to him.

He remembers when he used to love science. Guess having your life ripped to pieces puts a dampener on old hobbies and interests.

He’s gotten used to the collar by now. His body had slowly begun to realize that the collar wasn’t going to come off anytime soon and that it needed to sit down and shut up with its complaints, because Wally wasn’t in the mood to feel them right then. Or, ever, really. And it must’ve eventually gotten the whole memo, because he doesn’t feel the aches anymore. Now he just feels resigned. He knows the collar won’t come off, so why waste time feeling pity for himself? Why stay on the hall grounds? So he walks the city instead, hating it all the while, as slow as every single other normal human there, and he resigns himself to the uncomfortable stares that seem to follow him around. He doesn’t let them bother him, and he doesn’t let the cool metal of the inhibitor collar bother him either.

M’gann gave him a scarf before his first venture outside so that he could cushion his neck, keep the cold metal from chilling his skin. She rearranged it for him when he tried to wrap it around the outside of the band, made sure that while it draped prettily in moss green around his neck, it didn’t hide the collar in the slightest.

It’s not the collar that bothers him anymore.

It’s not even the constant escorts, the fact that he doesn’t have any privacy anymore when he goes out, that someone younger than him is often babysitting him. Garfield is most common, Jaime next. He knows that isolation is just as effective a tool as overstimulation, and he won’t complain about this if it means he can continue to have a room to himself at night.

It’s the whispers that he hears as he goes.

“It that the consort?” people like to say, mouths hidden behind hands and heads turned into shoulders while the eyes still were drawn to him for a second look.

“It is. Look at him,” responders sigh out, their eyes clinging to him in different ways as they try to imagine how he earned that name. No one outside the Hall ever calls him Kid Flash anymore.

There’s always the occasional “He can’t be a consort though. He and Nightwing were only ever friends, and he and Tigress were never even that. He was with that Artemis girl until she died. Why would he show up out of nowhere and immediately jump in bed with them?”

He likes when people ask that. It makes him hope that there’s someone out there who will figure out enough to stop the new League, but someone always answers, “He’s wearing a _collar_. I don’t think he’s got much choice about it one way or the other.”

He _does,_ but they don’t know that. He hates himself just a little for never correcting them.

That’s not to say Dick and Artemis hadn’t offered. They had been enthusiastic in the invitation, saying that his return would make everything perfect, it would complete the relationship that only formed from shared grief over him. He said it would happen the day the collar came off.

He knows the collar isn’t ever coming off.

“You want me that badly?” He’d shouted at the two of them the third time they offered, his eyes burning with angry tears. “Then set me free.”

“We can’t do that Wally, not until you agree with our new rules, not until you understand that drastic measures are sometimes needed,” they’d both pleaded, their hands tangling around his arms as they begged for him to just stop fighting them.

He had pulled away from them roughly enough that his arms bore scratches from their nails for hours. “Then I guess neither of you will ever get me.”

Little beads of blood had bloomed under the skin as he left the Hall for the hated streets, welling up as if to mock him with the color. _Look,_ they whisper, _look at the color of righteousness and hope and speed, at everything that you once held dear to you and was taken away by the very same shade._

The people on the street will never know of those conversations. They’ll only see the raised red lines on his arms that can’t fade without his meta-healing and the defeated look on his face. They’ll assume, and he won’t correct.

The whispers continue to coil in his ears.

Yeah, he hates walking around D.C.

* * *

He’s running, faster than he’s ever run before. He can still feel arcs of electricity coursing through him, lighting his nerves on fire, causing his muscles to contract painfully as he forces them to continue moving. The light from the chrysalis energy bounces off the snow in addition to shining directly in his eyes, and even through his goggles the world seems to white out.

His last words to his Uncle Barry seem to hover in the air. Wally can almost still hear them, even after his body has finally evaporated into nothing. Wally wonders what death will feel like and waits for time to catch up to the speed of his mind, after this feeling of frozen time disappears. It takes more time than he’s expecting—it feels like he’s been running for far longer than the milliseconds he expected he had left.

The light changes. The ground under Wally’s feet suddenly loses its slippery nature. The shift is so abrupt and unexpected that Wally trips, his whole body flying forward in a way it hasn’t in almost five years, since that early team mission to Santa Prisca. He has a moment to feel embarrassed about his rookie mistake as he’s hurtled almost in slow motion toward the ground. He never makes it, instead slamming headfirst into a wall.

The light finally fades, and Wally slips into unconsciousness.

When he finally is able to drag his eyes open, the light has returned. It’s different somehow, he recognizes, in the second his eyes are cracked open before he’s slamming them shut again. The light feels less Reach-y and more fluorescent-y. He tries again, slitting his eyelids open a crack and a millimeter at a time to lets his pupils get used to the sharp contrast. It takes forever, a whole four seconds, to get them all the way open, and another ten to finally shift his head to the side. He sees chrome and metal, and recognizes the med bay of the Watchtower.

He wonders why he’s alone. He expected to be surrounded by angry but ultimately loving people. Uncle Barry would have been holding his hand, letting go to pace at superspeed every few seconds before returning to his side, while Artemis would be sitting in a chair holding his other hand, glaring at him for disappearing on her right after they get each other back, for scaring her and not telling her what stupid thing he was planning on doing. Dick would be curled up at his feet like a cat, the acrobat able to get comfortable in any position and any space with ease. Bart would be zipping around like Barry, probably talking at super speed with Jaime simply because the teen was the only other one who could keep up with his speech.

And yet, he’s alone.

The only explanation is that he’s been out for a lot longer than a few mere hours, that he’s been unconscious for long enough that a constant beside vigil is unneeded or too hard to keep up.

How long has he been out? Two weeks? A month?

The door opens, and Wally watches as it moves in slow motion, his eagerness to see his loved ones making his body speed up unintentionally. He likes it—it allows for him to fully absorb what it is he’s seeing as Artemis and Dick walk into the room, talking softly with each other.

They’re not the same as he remembers. Artemis no longer looks like a young college student, a twenty-year-old sometimes-hero who kicks ass while looking flawless, even with blood in her hair or dripping from her nose. Dick no longer looks like the young high school graduate who chose to go straight to the police academy instead of getting a degree. They look… old.

Well, older.

As in, older than him.

Artemis looks to be in her mid-twenties, her face more angular though no less regal in its aged-up state. Her hair isn’t as long as it used to be either. Instead it’s cut at her shoulder-blades, a full two feet shorter than it was the last time Wally saw her.

Dick is the same, looking to be in his mid-twenties and weary from it. The laugh lines that he’s always had around his eyes are too prominent to _just_ be laugh lines, and there’s a slight downward twist to his lips like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

It’s strange, and Wally doesn’t really like it. Artemis is reminding him too much of Tigress like this, and while his relationship with Dick had been stressed recently, he didn’t want his friend to ever look like that, to look almost like Batman.

He lets time catch up to him. When Artemis and Dick are fully in the room, Artemis breaks off her conversation with Dick, looking at Wally with a forced disinterest that melts away instantly when she sees he’s awake.

“Wally,” she breathes out as she rushes to him, clasping at his hand as she sits to Wally’s right, while Dick takes up the space to his left. Her face is brighter than it had been a few moments ago, lighter and younger and not as harsh, while Dick is full on smiling again, letting out a little laugh that Wally has missed while his hands fawn over him, holding his head for a mere second before they travel down to his shoulders and arms and his free hand. Dick hugs him after that, pulling him up from his reclining position, and Wally feels his unease almost disappear in the apparent joy of his two friends. Dick has always been a tactile person, preferring to show his affection through physical connection than through any other way. The last few months, during which he was leader and Artemis was undercover, he had begun to seek out that comfort less and less. If he’s this excited and physical again, surely whatever happened can’t be too bad.

“Hey, Dick,” Wally greets, voice strained from the crushing grip of his best friend. Dick releases him with a laugh, holding him out to just stare at him.

“Hey, Artemis,” he says next, pulling her hand up to press a kiss to the back of her knuckles. She smiles at him, the small one she reserved for when she was content and not worried about what life might throw at them. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it while she was undercover, and it does him good to see it again.

“How long have I been out? What happened? Did we stop the MFD’s? I can remember… fading.”

The sad looks come back.

“You’ve been unconscious here in medical for about a week,” Artemis begins. “You’ve been healing pretty nicely, so you shouldn’t need to be here anymore after tomorrow night, maybe afternoon.”

Dick speaks next. “You stopped the final MFD. Everything was fine, you saved us, but yes. You did… cease… for a time. We thought you were dead. There was no body left when the storm cleared.”

Wally looks down at where his and Artemis’ hands are connected. “You both are older,” he says.

“So are you,” Artemis says back.

“How much older?” Wally doesn’t really want to know how much of his life has vanished, but he needs to. Dick is the one to answer.

“Six years, Wally. You’ve been gone for six years.”

* * *

He wonders sometimes if Bart might be willing to take the collar off of him. Surely he could understand how… horribly confining and claustrophobic not being able to run felt. He’d grown up that way after all.

He’d grown up in a world where nothing was his own choice. He was forced to be a slave for the Reach, forced to work until he would have likely died. Wally might not be working, he might be stuck here in this palace in his silk clothes and bare feet, but he knows that there is no escape from this. Either he learns to kill, to take lives like the rest of his teammates have in his absence, or he dies with a collar on his neck.

(He hates when he thinks of this. He knows one day he’ll break. He wasn’t made for sitting still and marble floors and silk cloth. He was made for blood and blisters and victory in battle.)

(He can’t think of this as a battle if he knows he’ll lose. He prefers to call it his own sub-branch of evolutionary theory. Either he changes or he dies, and he doesn’t get millions of years to do it. Even his slowed-down is slightly sped up for everyone else.)

He finally brings himself to ask one day, when they’re walking on one of the many trails through the gardens outside the old Hall of Justice. Bart just stops and stares at him blankly. He is there one second and gone the next, and Wally already knows the coming hours will be filled with pain.

* * *

Three months later, he’s still getting used to walking without that connection to his speed. It’s jarring, and he finds himself often thinking like his younger self used to, back before he had replicated Uncle Barry’s experiment, back when this was his normal. He finds himself acting like it too.

By all accounts, he’s twenty-one, even though he’s really twenty-seven. Those six years in the speedforce didn’t prevent him from aging physically, but mentally he’s fallen behind, still feeling the same age as when he’d disappeared, which isn’t quite ironic enough to make Wally laugh. While part of him is just grateful to be alive and _out,_ the bigger part of him wishes that he had aged normally, that he had realized time passing as he was stuck running. He hates the way he feels younger than Dick now.

It’s not an age thing, or a pride thing, suddenly being the “youngest” instead of the oldest between them; it’s a power thing. Artemis and Dick treat him like a child, coddling him and trying to convince him to agree with them. They don’t listen when he tries to tell them things either; he’d let them know three separate times that he kept seeing a random child running around the Hall—black hair, slate eyes, athletic, and practically a ghost—but every time Dick and Artemis just looked to the other and smiled.

Wally hates that smile. It tells of stories that he could have been a part of had he not disappeared. It says that Dick and Artemis have moved on without him, that they’ve made their lives worth something without him around. They can read each other better than he can at this point, and that smile tells whole conversations that stem mostly around them laughing at Wally, at his freak out over the child, and at his apparent idiocy, since he still can’t figure out who that kid is.

No one else in the Hall will tell him either. They just give him a pitying look, one that _screams_ “How do you not know already?”

He is sick of it.

He decides to follow the little girl the next time he sees her.

It isn’t too difficult once he finally makes the decision. All he had to do is loiter in one of the side rooms that was converted into a lounge space and wait for the little ball of energy to go racing by. The moment he sees her he is slipping out of the room and after her, barely keeping up by following the sounds of her laughter around the corners.

The laughter stops and he thinks he’s lost her again, but when he makes it around the corner into the next hallway, he sees the girl peeking around an open doorway with a disgusted look on her face.

She huffs petulantly then bolts away again, cartwheeling three times before returning to her feet. She lets out an excited squeal for Lian and is gone in seconds. Wally laments losing her briefly as he approaches the doorway, wondering what she was staring at with such profound revulsion. There isn’t much it can possibly be—the room is small, and if he isn’t mistaken, it’s one of the many bedrooms on this side of the Hall, put there for the League’s benefit. He peeks in, only intending to look for a moment, but the sight arrests him.

It is Dick.

And Artemis.

_Together._

Dick is laying back against the side of a couch, his left arm bent back behind his head as support for his head. His right fingers twirl up in Artemis’ hair, creating a soft curl from the apparent repetition of the act. She is laying half on top of him, her body tucked in between his and the back of the sofa.

They’re kissing slowly, clearly doing so more for the connection than the actual act. Artemis is smiling softly with lidded eyes, and Dick is varying between equally half-closed eyes and fully shut ones. Every time Artemis ends one kiss for a breath, he smiles brightly in silent laughter as he leans back in for another open-mouthed kiss.

Wally must’ve lost what little stealth he once had in the time he was gone because he makes an absolute mess of himself in surprise. He’s trying to back away and get out of there before either of them realizes he’s here, but the lack of speedforce combined with shock means he trips over his own feet and announces himself with a loud thud as he hits the ground.

Artemis and Dick look at him in tandem, and Wally kinda wants to die right then and there to escape the embarrassment.

He’s not getting the reaction he’s expecting though, and that almost makes it a little better, but he’s not sure how he’s supposed to react. Who is he is this case? Is he the ex or the boyfriend? Should he be angry over Artemis cheating on him with his best friend? Should he apologize for being that awkward ex that ruins the new relationship? He wishes one of them would do something to let him know how he should be reacting.

Dick should either be guilty at being caught or irritated at the interruption, but instead he’s just… laying there. His arm is still behind his head, his fingers are still curled in Artemis’ hair. Artemis is no more of a help than Dick; she’s just giving him her signature _You’re adorable when you’re like this_ look.

“Hey Wally,” she finally says, as if that clears up anything.

He swallows nervously and clears his throat. “Hi.”

“Don’t be shy,” Dick says, mischief alight in his eyes. “You’re welcome to join in.”

Wally turns redder than his hair, and the two on the couch are clearly evil because they decide to laugh at his embarrassment.

“Well?” Artemis prompts, her voice lilting up and eyes wide to convey her curiosity at his choice.

Wally makes it back to his feet somehow and takes a cautious step into the room. When the pair do nothing, he haltingly makes his way to the reclining chair that waits by their feet.

“How long has this been a thing?” He asks, not entirely sure if he wants to know.

“Pretty quickly after you disappeared,” Dick answers, his fingers leaving Artemis’ curls so that he can gently trail them up and down her arm. The movement catches Wally’s attention and doesn’t let it go for so long that he almost misses the rest of Dick’s answer. “We were both pretty torn up over it, and what started out as one night of needing to not be alone turned into… well, this.”

Wally says nothing, just watches as Artemis looks to Dick with a question in her eyes. Dick thinks on the answer for a moment, then nods slightly, prompting Artemis to look back at Wally.

She speaks. “We’d both lost the person we loved. It was easier to get by with each other.”

It takes him longer than it should have to understand what it is that she’s saying, but when he does his eyes go wide and he stares at Dick, feeling like he’s seeing him for the first time.

“You… me?” He asks, aware of his halting speech but unable to fix it. Dick just shrugs halfway and nods.

“I mean…I. Uh,” Wally flounders, still staring at his best friend. “Thanks?”

Dick laughs. “You’re welcome,” he says, clearly not worried at all.

Wally hears footsteps from the doorway, and this time, the little girl from earlier runs into the room instead of hiding outside in the hall. She leaps a few feet away from the couch and lands on top of Dick and Artemis, who automatically catch her so that she doesn’t roll off them and the couch onto the floor. Wally knows his mouth must be open.

She’s babbling, switching easily between English and three other different languages (he thinks one of them is French, knows one is Vietnamese, but he doesn’t recognize the third), while looking between the two on the couch. Wally thinks he hears her say “Lian” at one point, which would make sense since she had shouted that earlier.

Dick takes pity on him, saying something back to the girl that gets her to stop her running mouth and turn to look at Wally.

“Uncle Wally?” she asks, rolling away onto the floor and racing over to him. She jumps again, this time into his arms, and he catches her automatically. “Daddy says you’re his best friend. Where’ve you been? I’ve never seen you before.”

Wally stutters, “I was uh, gone.” It takes him a moment, staring at the girl apparently completely comfortable in a stranger’s arms, making the connections: black hair, slate eyes, four languages.

“I’ve seen you though,” he says, smiling at the little girl even though he’s fairly sure he just broke inside, somehow. “I’ve never caught your name. Can you tell me? Your parents have been keeping me in suspense.”

The little girl grins back at him. One of her front bottom teeth is missing, and she has dimples in her cheeks. “My name’s Alice,” she states proudly, turning her head up to the sky in a mock of turning up her nose at him. Her eyes scrunch up a little because of the lights above them, and her hair dances with the movement.

“Well if you’re Alice, does that make me the white rabbit?” he asks, going on a hunch where the name came from. He leans in to whisper conspiratorially, like what he’s about to say is a secret that he doesn’t tell anyone. “I do tend to run late for things. Even right now, I’m _years_ late to meeting you!”

Alice giggles and wraps her arms around Wally’s neck.

“It’s okay,” she easily forgives. “I’ll get you a watch and remind you every day of things.”

“Alice, can you leave us to talk with Uncle Wally?” Artemis asks.

“Lian’s asleep right now, mama,” Alice complains, turning from Wally to her mother with a pout.

“Go play with Carrie then, _ma petite alouette_. I’m sure your Aunt and Uncle would love to see you again, and you know you can get them to do anything for you,” Dick negotiates, watching his daughter as she considers her options.

“Okay,” she says, slipping off Wally’s lap back to the floor. She runs for the door, cartwheeling into the hallway, shouting behind her, “I’m going to get them to give me cookies!”

Artemis groans, letting her head flop onto Dick’s chest. “You get to put her to bed tonight when she’s grumpy and crashing from the sugar.”

Dick kisses the top of her head. “Bien sûr, mon amour,” he says into her hair, but his eyes don’t leave Wally.

He pulls his head back, resting it on the couch once more as Artemis returns to looking at Wally as well.

“So you two have a daughter.”

“Yes,” Artemis answers. “I thought at first she might have been yours.”

“Paris,” Wally says.

“Yeah, Paris. I couldn’t bear to lose what might have been that last part of you, but she turned out to be Dick’s.”

Wally feels a pained grin fighting to appear. “You weren’t kidding about fast, then.”

They fall into silence. Wally has never liked silence – it feels too much like being still, being stuck and frozen in place.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts. “I don’t really know how to act around all… this. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel.”

“We both care about you, Wally,” Dick says. “We both still feel very strongly for you, and we talked about maybe bringing you in to this with us when you were still recovering. You love Artemis, we all know that, and I would never want either of you to sacrifice one of the good things in your life, even if you don’t feel the same about me.”

Wally hates that his face turns red. “It’s not like, well,” Wally stumbles to say. “I’m not… opposed. I’ve thought. About it. Before.”

Dick lights up, a relieved and smug smile curving his lips.

It’s true, anyway. Wally had thought about Dick a fair amount while growing up, even after starting to date Artemis. Wally might be more inclined to be with girls, but he still found guys attractive, especially ones he worked with all the time, ones whose life he had saved and had been saved by over and over. He almost wanted to speed over to Dick and show him how serious he was, but-

Wally frowns, looking away from the two of them and taking a deep breath.

“But that’s the thing,” he says, looking at his feet. “It was before. Before you started killing people, before you started justifying it. Before you put an inhibitor collar on me. You’re no longer the same person that I used to think about. Neither of you are.”

He looks back up. Both Dick and Artemis look resigned, like they knew Wally was going to bring it up. Dick looks more crushed than Artemis – Wally regrets getting his hopes up with talk of the past, only to shatter them immediately.

“If you want me again, really want me as a partner and friend, and maybe as something more? Then you have to stop this.”

“We can’t do that, Wally,” Artemis says, and Wally stands up and walks toward the door.

“Then get used to the idea of never having me again,” he says as he passes the threshold.

On the way to his room, he hears Alice laughing.

* * *

“Bart told me you asked him to remove your collar today,” Artemis says. It’s not a question, but Wally can tell Artemis is waiting for an answer anyway.

Wally lets his head droop forward so that he’s looking at the floor. It’s colder than usual and painfully hard against his knees. “I did. He seemed like the most likely to listen since he grew up with one.”

“You know the rule. That collar comes off, you stop holding back.”

“Never.”

“Then there’s your answer.”

Artemis turns to leave, face shuttered so no emotion shows through, and Wally cries out after her, “What happened to you?”

Artemis pauses in the doorway, hand resting on the frame and head turned to the side so Wally can hear her response. “I stopped kidding myself, Wally. Not every fight can end perfectly, all tied up in a bow. We tried doing that for years, and all it did was get our people killed. You should understand that, for the longest time we thought you were one of them.”

Wally shakes his head even though Artemis won’t see. “Killing is not the answer.”

“Isn’t it though? I’ve never been under the illusion that I was perfectly good, my father saw to that in my training, but always giving the benefit of the doubt and trying to save others is exactly what Batman did and taught us, and it got Aquagirl killed. It got _Robin_ killed. If he had just killed the Joker…”

Artemis sighs heavily and drops her hand back to her side. “We’re not asking you to go for the kill as the first resort. We’re not saying that you should go out and kill them without first trying other ways. But if they are so far gone, like the Joker, or Ra’s, or Vandal Savage, then why bother? Just save the world time and pain and get rid of those people while you have the chance.”

Artemis finally leaves.

Wally wants to shout after her _But what happens when that so-called point of no return changes in your mind?_

* * *

The watchtower is strangely quiet when Wally finally is released from medical. He runs immediately down the halls to see if he can find any of his teammates, but every hall he travels is deserted. He doesn’t intrude into their rooms, but he does make his way to what he likes to call the observation deck.

It’s where the team had fought against the League back on New Year’s Eve eleven years earlier. The multiple levels are still there, hanging out over an expansive room with the most beautiful view Wally can ever remember seeing. He has always loved seeing the Earth from space, and this time is no different.

Ignoring his discomfort at the quiet, Wally stops inches from the glass. His breath fogs it up a bit, but he only has to swipe a hand across it to reclaim the sight. In front of him the planet turns slowly, peacefully, unaware of the tortures its heroes suffer through to keep it that way.

Wally takes a step back and turns to keep running, but the light from the memorial catches his attention. There is too much of it to only be holograms of him, Tula, Jason, and Kord. He approaches slowly, taking his time to prepare himself for the worst. Who has joined the dead in the six years he has been gone?

It is so much worse than he thought.

Just around two dozen holograms now stand where once there had been only four. His own is still up, as there hasn’t been enough time yet since his accidental time-jump to take it down. Behind and around him are almost every single member of the Justice League. His eyes fall naturally on his uncle, and Wally feels sick seeing him just standing there. Barry was never still, and his hologram dishonors his memory by keeping him frozen for eternity.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there staring at the dead before Artemis approaches, coming to stand by his side.

“How did this happen?” he asks, finally tearing his eyes away from his uncle.

Artemis looks down, her jaw tightening in anger. “The Light,” she finally answers.

“Only a few weeks after you died, an alien tyrant from Apokolips, Darkseid, attacked. His forces were global, spreading us all thin. They had weapons of fire, and J’onn died almost immediately. M’gann got lucky. She was still on Mars with Conner and Gar. Aquaman held out a little longer, but the heat eventually made him fall. Kaldur was in Atlantis with Queen Mera. The three Green Lanterns went after Darkseid himself. He batted them away like flies. Next thing we know there’re three rings flying around trying to find new bearers, but a different lantern showed up, one in yellow, and seized them. We still don’t know who he is or where he went; he left right after obtaining the rings.”

Artemis paused, taking a moment to gather her thoughts and remember what happened next. “After that were the Hawks, shot right out of the sky. Supes came next. Seemed to think Darkseid was his fault and went after him, thinking he might have more luck somehow than three lanterns combined. Darkseid had the same powers as him and knocked him out long enough to pull out a kryptonite spear. Green Arrow and Black Canary were still in Star City. We didn’t find out until later than he was gone. Same as Icon, Atom, Plastic Man, and Black Lightning. Captain Atom was flying over Central on his way to the main fight when something hit him. He crashed, and something caused him to explode, taking all of Central with him. I’m sorry, Wally.”

Wally loses the ability to stay standing, collapsing to his hands and knees. His uncle being dead is something he was always preparing for – he knew the risks of being a member of the League – but Aunt Iris? His mom and dad? They shouldn’t have ever been in harm’s way. They should have survived even where he and Barry couldn’t.

Artemis crouches beside him, pulling him back into her arms and holding him close, rocking slightly and petting his hair back like she used to when they were at Stanford together. “After that, Batman ordered Billy, Zatanna, Rocket, and the rest of the team back to the Watchtower. We fell back to the Hall, since it was the closet zeta point, but Darkseid followed us. We were making our last stand there, the last ten League members and the team combined. Right when Darkseid was about to attack, the Light showed up. For a moment we all thought that it was going to get worse, but then they started fighting Darkseid with us.

“Luthor provided us with weapons, ones that were finally able to injure the aliens. Red Arrow got in a few shots with some tricked out arrows, injuring Darkseid himself, but it also made the alien angry. He sent an attack after Billy, and Wonder Woman jumped in front of it, thinking her cuffs could repel the attack. She was wrong.

“That’s when Klarion attacked. We all thought that the Light was realizing they had miscalculated or something, because the Witch Boys’ spells started taking out the aliens. Darkseid went mad with rage. He charged at the Light, and in his anger, he didn’t see Doctor Fate appear behind him. The two Lords attacked simultaneously. Zatanna and Rocket created a bubble around him like they did when Jaime was on mode. He barely lasted more than a minute against the onslaught, and finally was ripped to shreds by Klarion’s chaos magic. With his death, the rest of his army fled.”

Artemis pauses for a moment, pulling herself out of the memory to watch Wally. He’s shaking slightly, little vibrations running down his body as he tries to reign in his grief and anger.

“That still leaves nine League members,” he manages to say, his throat closing up around the words and making them come out strangled and soft. Artemis nods once.

“As the rest of the army fled, the Light left too, not wanting to risk getting caught for coming out to help. We all let them go, not realizing it was still all part of their plan. We started the clean-up process, and after an hour of checking for civilian casualties and all the usual stuff, Billy asked if he could go check on his home and left. Roy said the same thing, wanting to go find Jade, Lian, and Arsenal. Zatanna and Rocket decided to stay with us down in the Hall, continue with the efforts to clear debris and start rebuilding anything we could. Batman, Flash, Doctor Fate, Black Canary, and Red Tornado all went up to the Watchtower to oversee global communications and coordinate the disaster relief.

“About three hours after they left, the Hall zeta tube shut down. We didn’t notice until we returned another five hours after that. Tim hacked into the Watchtower to see what the deal was, and that’s when we saw the rest of them fall, five hours too late.”

Wally swears under his breath, a pathetic utterance that spoke more of his helplessness than any actual anger.

“No one had any time to prepare. Queen Bee, Klarion, and Ra’s al Ghul appeared right on the Watchtower floor. Klarion cast a spell before Nabu could defend, and he was banished from this plane of existence. Next was Red Tornado. He tried to send us a warning, but he only managed to enact the emergency shutdown to the Watchtower instead before his body was ripped apart. He didn’t want any of us accidentally coming through and getting ourselves killed along with them. He already knew, Wally. He knew they weren’t going to survive.

“After that, Queen Bee forced Barry to kill Dinah. He phased his hand right through her throat, then phased right through the glass into open space.”

Wally feels his heart stutter in shock and pain. Artemis pauses again to regard the hologram of Batman, the only one still alive in her tale.

“Klarion trapped Batman. Ra’s al Ghul wanted to talk to him first, before killing him. Batman reacted more to what was said than to the deaths of the League. He lunged for Ra’s, actually managed to break free from Klarion’s control and land a few blows on him before Ra’s opened his throat with his own batarang.”

Wally feels like he is going to be sick, but either Artemis doesn’t notice, or she doesn’t care, too caught up in the memory.

“He thanked Batman. Apparently, Batman had hooked up with Ra’s daughter four-ish years earlier and they’d had a son together. B didn’t know about him and Ra’s flaunted it at him. Said something about how he was going to one day take over his grandson’s body and use it for himself, and there was nothing Batman could do to stop him.”

“What happened to his kid?” Wally asks. He doesn’t know if he wants to hear, if the kid’s fate is just one more bad thing to add to the list.

“After we recuperated and finished the clean up effort, we made the decision to infiltrate the League of Shadows and rescue him. Jade helped us, and after several raids, we managed to find and extract him. After that, we decided as a group that it was time to take down the League of Shadows in an aggressive, preemptive strike, rather than a reactionary one to one of their schemes. It took a few months, but we finally took them down completely. They’ll never hurt anyone again.”

Wally pulls himself away from Artemis, looking at her in shock. “You took down the League of Shadows? How did you manage that?”

Artemis doesn’t answer for a long time, looking over Wally’s shoulder as she debates what to say. She nods once to herself and finally looks back to him.

“Wally,” she begins hesitantly, “A lot of things changed in the wake of all of this. We changed how we run things to accommodate that. Sometimes…” Artemis breaks eye contact, looking back over his shoulder again. “Sometimes it’s necessary to eliminate a threat. Permanently.”

Wally feels his heart go cold. “Artemis? Tell me you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”

Artemis looks down. “We took down the League of Shadows, and the rest of the Light. The world is a safer place without them in it. Even if it meant getting our hands dirty, it’s worth it for peace. Can you understand that?”

Wally shakes his head in disbelief. “We don’t _kill_ , Artemis. That makes us no better than them. You can’t just decide if someone lives or dies like that.”

Artemis sighs. “Do it.”

Before Wally can react, there is something cold and metal clamping down around his neck. He tries to spin and defend himself, but he’s so… slow? Panicking, he tries to tap into his speed, but there is nothing there. He scrambles away at a normal pace and presses his hands to his neck, where a brand-new inhibitor collar has taken up space. He looks at Artemis, and at Dick next to her, helping her to her feet.

“What?” he asks, not understanding what was happening. “Why would you…?”

“We’re sorry, Wally,” Dick says, stepping closer to Wally and pulling him to his feet. Wally has to lean on him in order to not fall again, his legs unable to hold him due to the strain of not having his speed combined with the shock of betrayal and deaths he’s just heard about.

“But,” Artemis continues, “Until you can see the truth in this, we can’t let you use your speed to stop us.” He tries to pull away, but Dick has an iron grip on his arms. He can’t do much more than verbally protest, and even that is ignored as Dick and Artemis pull him to the zeta tubes. They emerge inside the Hall of Justice, and Wally takes in the changes just as he takes in the aged-up faces of the children he used to know all staring back at him. Dick’s calm voice startles him out of his staring.

“Don’t worry Wally. We’ll take care of you until then.”

* * *

It’s been almost year since he came back, just under eleven months. In that time, he’s pulled away from almost everyone – the only people he really talks to anymore are Dick and Artemis occasionally, and M’gann. Kaldur and Conner are always out, Roy spends most of his time with his family, and Bart has started to run away whenever he sees Wally enter the room.

Because of this, there is so much he still doesn’t know. He’s come to realize that despite the deaths of the old League members, the new league is just as large as before. There’s another two Kryptonians around, Donna has returned with other Amazons, more Bats lurk in the ceilings and shadows around him. There’s even a Green Lantern that shows up occasionally, alongside more aliens and magic users and even another robot guy.

M’gann talks about them like Wally knows who anyone is.

“Kori and Artemis went out last week,” she says, munching on a cookie. “Apparently Kori’s liked her for a long time, and they got to talking and realized they both know Jason. They spent their whole first date complaining about how dramatic he can be.”

Wally frowns. “Artemis went on a date with who? I didn’t know she and Dick were open to other people beyond me.”

M’gann laughs at him so hard she floats a few inches off her seat for a few seconds. “No, silly. Artemis the Amazon, you know the one with the long red hair? And Kori, the alien princess with the equally long red and sometimes orange flame hair? I’m sure you’ve seen them around before, though usually they stay out of the way. Artemis doesn’t really like most people here, and only puts up with Jason, Biz, and Akila, who you’ve never met. Kori usually stays around Jason, Roy, and Jade.”

Wally didn’t recognize what seemed like half the names coming out of M’gann’s mouth. “Okay? Who’s Jason and Biz then? And how will I know who Akila is if I ever see her?”

M’gann frowned at him. “You know Jason, Wally. Robin? He’s like you sort of, came back to life a few years ago because of the Lazarus Pit? Anyway, Biz is Bizarro, one of the Kryptonians we have, but he’s kinda the opposite – Kryptonite doesn’t hurt him, it heals him. He was a failed experiment for Project Match. Artemis and Akila are from the Egyptian Amazons. Akila usually stays there. She’s only been to the Hall once, and that was before you came back.”

Wally is frozen in shock. “Jason’s alive again?”

M’gann slowly nods. “Yeah. He operates as the Red Hood now. Mostly in Gotham, but sometimes he goes global, or even to other planets. He and Donna and Kyle went to another dimension once.”

“Who else joined or same back or whatever while I was gone?”

M’gann thinks for a moment. “Just from Gotham alone is Stephanie, Cass, Jason, Damian, and Steph’s daughter Carrie. Then there’s Connor and Cissie, who are Arrows, and Kara who’s Kryptonian. She was Kal’s older cousin, but her pod here to Earth was delayed. Artemis the Amazon is here a lot, Kori and her sister, Komand’r. Raven and Vic are the purple magic girl and the guy who’s part machine. Kyle’s the new Green Lantern. There’s… a bunch more, really. And not everyone operates out of the Hall here. We have stations set up globally. That’s why Akila has only been here once, and I know there’s a bunch of people in England who are basically our equivalents. We’ve communicated with them through comms, but never in person. I’ll give you a list, so you can read up on them when you’ve got nothing else to do. How’s that sound?”

Wally shrugs and nods. He’s not used to being offered information like that. He’ll take what he can get, but to have M’gann spell it all out and pretend like he ever has anything to do is disheartening. All he does is sit around. He’ll probably have the entire registry of the new League memorized in a few days.

M’gann hands him another cookie for his plate, despite it still being full. Wally knows she’s concerned – he used to scarf them down in half a second, but his appetite has been disappearing the longer he’s collared. He knows he looks unhealthy – weight loss and muscle deterioration combined with a lack of sleeping well probably has him looking like a skeleton.

Wally takes a bite of the cookie to appease her. Despite not liking the choices she’s made, the choices everyone has made, she’s still a friend, and one of the few he has left to talk to.

“So,” Wally says after finishing the cookie. “Tell me more about this other Artemis and her first date with Kori.”

M’gann beams and begins talking again.

Wally only hears every third word.

* * *

He gives in to them one year to the day since waking up.

He’s been collared for a full orbit of the earth, a whole year of being forced to slow down, walk everywhere. He’s locked himself in his room for the last week of it. No one has come to see him for anything other than food, and even then, he doesn’t talk to them or let them in when they hand it to him.

He expects them to come see him any time now. They know him well enough to know he can’t fight them anymore.

The door opens. Artemis and Dick walk in. He’s standing at the barred window.

They ask if he’s changed his mind. He doesn’t answer or even turn around. They all know the answer.

They both walk up to him, Dick on his left and Artemis on his right.

“Wally?” Artemis asks again, soft as a whisper. He says nothing, but he thinks they know what he’s thinking because he can’t stop the few tears that break free from his eyes, trailing silently down each cheek.

He swallows once the nervousness and dread in his throat and lets his mouth fall open softly to take a shallow breath. After letting it out, he holds his lungs there, empty of air and pleasantly tired, not yet aware of their impending distress. He swallows again and closes his eyes. His right hand lifts, palm up, sitting in the air asking for the key to the inhibitor collar.

They say nothing, but the cool touch of metal sends shivers through his arm and down his spine. He knows there’s no way to go back once he follows through, but he’s just so tired.

His fingers curl around it, and without taking a breath still or opening his eyes, he fits the key into the lock and twists. With a loud click the collar breaks apart and clatters to the ground. Wally drops the key after it and finally relaxes when he can feel his speed again. His feet feel glued to the floor. but it doesn’t matter.

He takes a breath and in the next moment his head is being turned to the right. Artemis kisses him. “You’re making the right choice.”

Dick steps closer, pulling Wally against him and resting his chin on Wally’s shoulder. Wally still hasn’t opened his eyes. A hand snakes up to cup his right cheek, gently pulling Wally’s face over to the left this time. Dick kisses him too, whispering against his lips how proud he is of Wally for choosing the right side.

When his face is released, he lets his head fall back to center and opens his eyes to stare out the window again. He can see the reflecting pool out in front with its star-shaped isthmus and golden spires, and in the distance two other members flying out for a mission nearby. Wally’s never felt farther from freedom in his life.

His eyes fall shut once more, and he prepares for his life to evolve.

* * *

_This is the way the world ends_

_This is the way the world ends_

_This is the way the world ends_

_Not with a bang but a whimper._

**Author's Note:**

> Once again!! I can't recommend Fixations enough!!!
> 
> [Find me online :)](https://linktr.ee/belabellissima)


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